Quote: “I won’t live on my knees. I will die on my feet.” – Trapped Under Ice

Today was a little up-and-down. I only got about six hours of sleep and I worked a full shift before I even hit the gym door. Pairing my lack of sleep with the fact that the end of the year always leads me to be much more introspective, my focus was either on the “then” or “soon to be” instead of the here and now. Of course, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing but it most certainly affected my ability to get my normal pre-gym pump.

However, I don’t like making excuses so I’ll be the first to say that this session was a bit of a let down for several reasons.

When I got to the gym, there was a flock, yes, a flock, of gentlemen doing ½ squats in the rack and talking about, I kid you not, the proper why to grill a chicken breast. So, I didn’t the barbell or rack for either of my two main lifts. Strike one. Even more comically, when I took off my hoodie to reveal a Vegan Bodybuilding shirt, one of them pointed and smirked. Strike two.

Let me preface what I’m about to say with this: I’m not a vain person. Fair from it. I would rather let my actions speak louder than an equally smary gesture ever could. So, after the very same gentlemen struggled with 15lb dumbbell side lateral raises, and I proceeded to blast through two sets of 12 with 25lbs, I felt an odd sense of pride as well as embarrassment; I definitely didn’t intend to out-do this guy who found my shirt laughable – those were the numbers I needed to put up today to hit my goals. However, I probably looked like just as big of an asshole to him as he did to me, which is definitely not how I want to represent vegan power and strength. Strike three.

Needless to say, it definitely put a damper on the rest of what I already felt to be a sub-optimal session. Now that I’m home, though, my shoulders are definitely feeling it. Maybe the higher rep-range is what I need to stimulate some growth there. I suppose we’ll see next week. Only onward and upward.

So, I’m not going to lie, I completely blew my macros last night after setting them up perfectly during the day (super low fat and carbohydrates; tons of protein). And I definitely felt the burn today appetite and bloat/water-weight wise. So, not only did I barely eat anything before hitting gym at 8:00 p.m. after work I also didn’t bother with the scale today. The former’s a bit of an issue but the latter is alright – no sense in causing unnecessary anxiety over something that will even out in the next few days.

I also plan on doing some damage control macros for the next few days just to get the water-weight and bloat down. I felt sluggish and heavy all day and it probably wouldn’t be a stretch to say I had about 3,000 calories yesterday (and I am serious). But, to be honest, when I had a brief moment of internal self-badgering, it made me realize I've been far too strict about how I eat and while the circumstances were pretty much the worst possible last night, it definitely shed some light on my mindset regarding nutrition.

So, new philosophy I have a new, even more posi, philosophy: eat plates to move plates.

Speaking of more positive things: I got paired with Jennifer Nicol for coaching! I’m so pumped about this it’s not even funny.

Oh. And I’m not going to preface my work out with anything other than this: I like doing a linear 5x5 instead of a static one. Why? Because it puts me into beast mode.

Work Out:Stationary bike10 minutes/2.4 miles

Barbell Squat1x5x1001x5x1201x5x1351x5x1401x4x1452x3x145I could have easily hit 1x5x145 but my form would have been shot on that last rep. I'm a stickler for squat form - I do not want an injury and as long as the numbers keep going up, I'm not going to rush it. Plus, I wanted to make sure I had enough steam for my deads.

Barbell Deadlift1x5x1001x5x1151x5x1201x5x1251x5x1301x2x1351x1x135These last two sets were "testers" because I wanted to see if using the big plates would help me out. Definitely did. I know I can hit 1x5x135 no problem with less sets beforehand. Looking forward to that next week.

Seated Calf Raise1x6x1501x5x1551x5x160I will never understand how/why my calf raises are so insane.

Incline Leg Press1x5x1601x5x1801x5x2001x5x2101x5x2301x5x2501x5x270I have no idea where this came from but it felt fucking awesome. My legs were shaking so hard on the last two reps. Best feeling.

Leg Curls1x5x1001x10x100

Macros: Still getting eaten. Something like 12/140/100 so far. (Damage control macros: 40/180/180).

I'll also put up a post dedicated solely to food n00dz in a bit. Got a lot of catching up to do on the forum with all these new logs!

vegansludge wrote:Quote: “Watch me rise with the things we carry.” – Have Heart

So, I’m not going to lie, I completely blew my macros last night after setting them up perfectly during the day (super low fat and carbohydrates; tons of protein). And I definitely felt the burn today appetite and bloat/water-weight wise. So, not only did I barely eat anything before hitting gym at 8:00 p.m. after work I also didn’t bother with the scale today. The former’s a bit of an issue but the latter is alright – no sense in causing unnecessary anxiety over something that will even out in the next few days.

I also plan on doing some damage control macros for the next few days just to get the water-weight and bloat down. I felt sluggish and heavy all day and it probably wouldn’t be a stretch to say I had about 3,000 calories yesterday (and I am serious). But, to be honest, when I had a brief moment of internal self-badgering, it made me realize I've been far too strict about how I eat and while the circumstances were pretty much the worst possible last night, it definitely shed some light on my mindset regarding nutrition.

So, new philosophy I have a new, even more posi, philosophy: eat plates to move plates.

Speaking of more positive things: I got paired with Jennifer Nicol for coaching! I’m so pumped about this it’s not even funny.

Oh. And I’m not going to preface my work out with anything other than this: I like doing a linear 5x5 instead of a static one. Why? Because it puts me into beast mode.

Work Out:Stationary bike10 minutes/2.4 miles

Barbell Squat1x5x1001x5x1201x5x1351x5x1401x4x1452x3x145I could have easily hit 1x5x145 but my form would have been shot on that last rep. I'm a stickler for squat form - I do not want an injury and as long as the numbers keep going up, I'm not going to rush it. Plus, I wanted to make sure I had enough steam for my deads.

Barbell Deadlift1x5x1001x5x1151x5x1201x5x1251x5x1301x2x1351x1x135These last two sets were "testers" because I wanted to see if using the big plates would help me out. Definitely did. I know I can hit 1x5x135 no problem with less sets beforehand. Looking forward to that next week.

Seated Calf Raise1x6x1501x5x1551x5x160I will never understand how/why my calf raises are so insane.

Incline Leg Press1x5x1601x5x1801x5x2001x5x2101x5x2301x5x2501x5x270I have no idea where this came from but it felt fucking awesome. My legs were shaking so hard on the last two reps. Best feeling.

Leg Curls1x5x1001x10x100

Macros: Still getting eaten. Something like 12/140/100 so far. (Damage control macros: 40/180/180).

I'll also put up a post dedicated solely to food n00dz in a bit. Got a lot of catching up to do on the forum with all these new logs!

Haha I would offer to come to Ohio to kick the bros' asses but it sounds like you emasculated them thoroughly. Nicely done! I can't wait to get enough definition in my arm to rep a VBB tank! When I get down to 140 lbs imma order one. And your calves are beast; just body weight makes mine cramp!!!

I have found that few things will keep me from the gym on a day I have designated as a lifting day. I woke up yesterday to an insane amount of snow, slush, and generally terrible weather. Apparently it was panic inducing enough to keep my work non-stop busy for seven of the eight hours I was scheduled until people decided it was “too bad out” to bother stocking up on groceries after seven p.m.

While most people went straight home after work yesterday, I headed directly for the gym with one mission: increase my bench 1RM. And while that was a success, I do feel like my shoulder press suffered since I was drained from benching. Rows tend to come easier for me so I am considering removing them from my power-day and switching them out for bench on lower-body hypertrophy today. We’ll see how I feel tomorrow.

I also received a pretty nice compliment while at the gym yesterday. Since I don’t really socialize while I’m there (I’m there to do work, you know?), it was differently a surprise.

In between sets, one gentleman motioned for me to take my headphones out. As I did so, I opened my mouth to ask if he wanted the rack (which is generally the only reason I’m ever spoken to when working out) but before I could finish he pointed to a guy standing next to him and said, “We’re talking shrugs, if you’re interested.” The expression on my face must have been one of confusion because he laughed.

And then he said something that made my day: “I was telling him I picked up a lot of my technique from watching you. I was using too much of my arms to pull the weight up instead of ‘pinching’ my shoulders together target my traps. Then when I watched you blast through those sets of 140 last week I realized what I was doing wrong.”

I don’t think there’s a higher form of gym flattery. We proceeded to make a little bit of small talk and he suggested I widen my grip on my shoulder presses since I’d seen him put up some big numbers with good technique and wanted his advice. He also suggested using the cable machine for a little while since, for him, it’s easier on his joints.

All-in-all, I was satisfied with the work-out even though the drive home in the snow, slush, and ice sucked. Gotta stay cold-ah, I guess.

Work out

Stationary bike

5 minutes/1 mile

Barbell Bench Press

1x5x45 1x5x55 1x5x60 1x5x65 2x3x70 1x2x75 1x1x75

Incline Dumbbell Bench Press

1x3x20 1x5x15 1x10x15

Barbell Shoulder Press

was a disaster.

1x5x45 1x2x50 1x3x50 1x2x50

Switched to a wider grip for these to see it would help.

3x2x45

Cable Shoulder Press

1x5x15 1x6x25 1x8x25 1x10x25

Bent Over Barbell Row

1x5x65 1x5x70 1x5x75 2x5x80 3x5x85

Bent Over Dumbbell Row

1x3x25

Macros:

20/173/140 (Low but doing damage control still from the weekend. Will even out as the week progresses.)

So, as I’ve talked about on both my tumblr and on here, I’ve been struggling with the idea of upping my caloric intake for quite some time for several reasons, among with include my Former Fat Kid history and my brief stint in severe under-eating. I put up a relatively personal – for me at least – post on my tumblr a few days ago regarding this subject. After doing so, I had intended to increase my calories to 2,000. And then New Year’s Eve hit.And I completely blew everything out of the water and ate roughly around 3,000 calories. While I’m not obsessive about my eating patterns by any means, it definitely drove me crazy for about two hours after waking the next morning. I felt sluggish, weighed down, and all-around shitty – mostly because of the amount and type of food I consumed but also partly because my Former Fat Kid fears crept into my mind for a hot minute.Then it hit me. Those kinds of fears don’t coincide with being strong. They don’t work with my goals, my beliefs, or my “preachings.”So, since Sunday, I’ve been running “damage” macros (40/175/175) to get the water-weight and bloat down and every day I’ve been thinking more and more about my current program, lifting and nutrition-wise.What I’ve surmised from this thinking is the following:

I need to add some things:

• I run a 4-day split because I don’t “have time” to hit the gym 5-days a week because of … well, excuses. Because of this, my bench/chest hypertrophy lifts tend to suffer since I don’t put enough rest days in between them and my power day. No more. Today was my first “legs only” day.• If I want to see the numbers keep going up in the gym, I need to see the scale going up, too. Which means my macros need to go up. Starting tomorrow calories increase to a flat 2,000 for two weeks and I will not weigh myself again until the 19th and we’ll go from there.• And I need to subtract some things:• I’ve been cooking with a lot of gluten lately and it’s been reeking havoc on my body despite helping me hit my protein numbers. If I’m going to be upping the calories, I can’t feel bloated all the time. So, while it’s been fun making seitan, it looks like that will fall to the way-side in favor of other foods (no fears, though, epic eats will always happen, though, they won’t be as extravagant as the tempeh bacon wrapped chicken seitan).• I’m also going to cut back on soy and soy-products. While they’re another good source of protein, I can’t justify my intake when I know how devastating soy can be, and is, for the environment.

I’m also going to try and be much more in depth with how I feel about my work-outs as well as with the exact things I eat. I usually write all of this down into a notebook but it only has a few pages left and I don’t really find it necessary to buy any more paper now that I have this training journal and my tumblr.So, hopefully everyone’s still in on the ride. As always, thanks for reading. Next post will resume our regularly scheduling programming.

vegansludge wrote:I have a present for anyone reading this log before I update about the last two days (and a little re-introduction to how I'll be posting here and my training program). It's called Epic Food Update.

vegansludge wrote:So, as I’ve talked about on both my tumblr and on here, I’ve been struggling with the idea of upping my caloric intake for quite some time for several reasons, among with include my Former Fat Kid history and my brief stint in severe under-eating. I put up a relatively personal – for me at least – post on my tumblr a few days ago regarding this subject. After doing so, I had intended to increase my calories to 2,000. And then New Year’s Eve hit.And I completely blew everything out of the water and ate roughly around 3,000 calories. While I’m not obsessive about my eating patterns by any means, it definitely drove me crazy for about two hours after waking the next morning. I felt sluggish, weighed down, and all-around shitty – mostly because of the amount and type of food I consumed but also partly because my Former Fat Kid fears crept into my mind for a hot minute.Then it hit me. Those kinds of fears don’t coincide with being strong. They don’t work with my goals, my beliefs, or my “preachings.”So, since Sunday, I’ve been running “damage” macros (40/175/175) to get the water-weight and bloat down and every day I’ve been thinking more and more about my current program, lifting and nutrition-wise.What I’ve surmised from this thinking is the following:

I need to add some things:

• I run a 4-day split because I don’t “have time” to hit the gym 5-days a week because of … well, excuses. Because of this, my bench/chest hypertrophy lifts tend to suffer since I don’t put enough rest days in between them and my power day. No more. Today was my first “legs only” day.• If I want to see the numbers keep going up in the gym, I need to see the scale going up, too. Which means my macros need to go up. Starting tomorrow calories increase to a flat 2,000 for two weeks and I will not weigh myself again until the 19th and we’ll go from there.• And I need to subtract some things:• I’ve been cooking with a lot of gluten lately and it’s been reeking havoc on my body despite helping me hit my protein numbers. If I’m going to be upping the calories, I can’t feel bloated all the time. So, while it’s been fun making seitan, it looks like that will fall to the way-side in favor of other foods (no fears, though, epic eats will always happen, though, they won’t be as extravagant as the tempeh bacon wrapped chicken seitan).• I’m also going to cut back on soy and soy-products. While they’re another good source of protein, I can’t justify my intake when I know how devastating soy can be, and is, for the environment.

I’m also going to try and be much more in depth with how I feel about my work-outs as well as with the exact things I eat. I usually write all of this down into a notebook but it only has a few pages left and I don’t really find it necessary to buy any more paper now that I have this training journal and my tumblr.So, hopefully everyone’s still in on the ride. As always, thanks for reading. Next post will resume our regularly scheduling programming.

4 day splits are good workouts! are you going to do an Upper/Lower split?

Yeah, setian must be pretty hard on you if you are slightly wheat gluten intolerent like me.

Mabye try eating some more lentils and.

Also, you could try eating spirulina and that PB2 stuff to get more protein.

also, I hear really good things about pea protein (apparently it's really easy to digest and it also has a good amino acid profile/score)

I know of a good plant protein powder too called 'Nitrofusion' maade by Arizona labs (or something like that); Derek Tresize swears by it.

Oh and one last thing, buy some "Flaxmeal", not flaxseed but packaged flaxmeal in the health-food section of the suermarket. It has like 4g of protein, 1g of fat, and like 1g of carbs per 10g serving. I buy Melrose Organic Golden Flaxmeal, it's great stuff that can go in virtuaally anything: baking recipes, on top of cereal, in shakes and smoothies, on vegan ice-cream etc.

Nicholas_Weir wrote:4 day splits are good workouts! are you going to do an Upper/Lower split?

Yeah, setian must be pretty hard on you if you are slightly wheat gluten intolerent like me.

Mabye try eating some more lentils and.

Also, you could try eating spirulina and that PB2 stuff to get more protein.

also, I hear really good things about pea protein (apparently it's really easy to digest and it also has a good amino acid profile/score)

I know of a good plant protein powder too called 'Nitrofusion' maade by Arizona labs (or something like that); Derek Tresize swears by it.

Oh and one last thing, buy some "Flaxmeal", not flaxseed but packaged flaxmeal in the health-food section of the suermarket. It has like 4g of protein, 1g of fat, and like 1g of carbs per 10g serving. I buy Melrose Organic Golden Flaxmeal, it's great stuff that can go in virtuaally anything: baking recipes, on top of cereal, in shakes and smoothies, on vegan ice-cream etc.

I'm going to follow PHAT much more closely - still doing the upper/lower split but giving shoulders/back, lower body, and chest/arms their own individual hypertrophy day since I've noticed that either my bench stalls or I can't give everything to my legs on the days when I run both.

I actually just bought some PB2 the other day from my work and I'm in love with it. And I run a rice/pea protein split from www.trueprotein.com and it works wonders. Basically, all my soy intake comes from milk, TVP, tofu, and the occasional indulgence (like those Field Roast sausages I got a sample of).

However, I'm definitely going to pick up some of that flaxmeal you mentioned!

Thank you so much for being such an attentive follower; it's awesome having someone to listen/get advice from, mate.

xChrisZx wrote:I can back Flaxmeal also. I am not using any right now since I am doing a huge cut but when I am not, I throw it on everything.

That PB2 stuff sounds awesome. Will have to get some after this cut.

The only advantage that Nitrofusion has over your TP mix is the added BCAA's and glutamine. Personally I like adding those myself.

Dude, PB2 is actually ideal for a cut: 2 tablespoons is 1.5(f)/5(p)/5(c) with 2g of fiber - so much easier to fit into cutting macros than regular peanut butter. It also comes in chocolate, apparently, if you're into that.

I can totally relate, I wasn't a fat kid but a fat young adult (age 23-25 40-50lbs overweight, no muscle!). I dropped 50 lbs with lifting and running (a lot of running, as well as becoming vegan and counting cals) It tooks me months to finally give in to eating 3k calories and stopping all cardio...didn't do it clean and I feel gross (although I knew this would happen and I was prepared to accept it) but my coach has me on a clean diet accounting for every macro and drinking tons of water, so now my goal is fat loss, which will also mean losing weight. My body fat has been measuring just under 22% and that's considered low for a female...but I still feel gross. Not sure if having muscle under 22% fat makes you look better or worse, but I feel like I look worse. But I'm really motivated now to eat everything super clean until June 9 and do everything else I need to do.. Hopefully after that I'll like the way I look and feel so much that I'll have a better outlook on things and won't be tempted to eat vegan junk. Curious as to what your coach has you doing to reach your goals...let me know!

jungle - Yeah, I was chubby from the time I was born (my family used to call me a "sumo" baby because I seriously looked like the Michelin man) until I turned 15 when I started taking a strength and conditioning class in high school. By the time I turned 16, I had dropped about 20 pounds and was pretty shredded for a teenage girl (I had the illusive "v" though my abs still didn't pop much). Then I changed schools, stopped lifting, started skateboarding more, and stayed skinny until I hit college. Then I gained back the weight I lost in high school from being inactive, eating more than I used to and, yes, drinking more than anyone probably ever should have. When I went vegan, I got obsessed with eating "clean" (and under-eating) and losing fat - no processed foods, doing way too much fucking cardio, and only doing isolation exercises. "Skinny fat" and "unhealthy" were the definition of me.Now, it's all about finding a balance. And, I know your coach probably knows better than I do but ... you don't have to completely cut out vegan "junk" to lose fat. IIFYM really does work. Not that I think you should be slamming back vegan Oreos every day but I think learning to make your own vegan treats with more ideal macros might be a good way to go about it. I know that's always a life saver for me. I have some recipes of stuff if you want them.